


Zora Barro: Jedi Archivist- A Star Wars Story

by ShimmyWookie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Jedi Archives (Star Wars), Order 66 (Star Wars), jedi archivist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29592042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShimmyWookie/pseuds/ShimmyWookie
Summary: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…A time of conflict! The Jedi Order continues their defense of the Galactic Republic in their struggle against the nefarious Separatist Confederacy. Led by Count Dooku, the Separatist Droid Army holds Jedi and Clone forces in a stalemate across the galaxy. Meanwhile, closer to home, sinister forces are at work to bring the republic to its knees.This is the story of Zora Barro, a sweet yet sometimes clueless Jedi Archivist starting slightly before Order 66 and continuing with her along her adventures. Rated T for possible future violence and/or trauma, but there will be nothing explicit in this story. This is based on Zora's ongoing story on TikTok, but includes details that I can't convey otherwise!. comments and concrit appreciated!
Kudos: 2





	Zora Barro: Jedi Archivist- A Star Wars Story

“Stop it, Gar! Madam Jocasta is going to put us on dusting duty for decades if she catches us!” Zora hissed, looking around the corner as her companion pulled holocrons seemingly at random from a shelf. The light of her lantern cast shadows through the archive whose flickering edges made the young archivist paranoid of her former master whose instincts for the protection of her precious records would rival the battle instincts of the Grandmaster himself. 

“Cool it Barro, your fussing is what’s going to get us caught. Besides, the old lady never stays up this late. She’s probably in her quarters with a nice cup of tea and one of those holo-romances that she pretends to despise so much.” Gar smirked. He was an archivist as well, having apprenticed under Madam Jocasta just before Zora. Pushing his dark-rimmed glasses up his sharply-angled nose, he reached behind a row of holocrons which sat primly in their places. 

“I think there’s a switch back here but my arm’s too big to reach. Would you give it a shot?” 

Zora huffed and took a final look down the row before walking quickly to his side. On principle, she thought that Gar’s theory that Madam Jocasta kept a secret vault somewhere in the Archive was preposterous. Why would their master keep such a massive secret from her padawans? Someday she and Gar would be in charge of the Archive, helping fellow Jedi access the information that they need to protect the Republic and grow in their understanding of the Force. How would they be able to do that if they didn’t know every item within the Archive. Zora remembered, though not with any particular fondness, the weeks when she was a padawan of memorising where each type of information was stored. Basic historical records were kept on datapads which accessed a secure mainframe, ancient Jedi teachings tended to be on the larger holocrons, the ones with many sides. Top-secret information like the locations of future younglings was kept on holocrons within the high security vaults and were only to be accessed by members of the council or those with permission. She shuddered at the memory of how that absolute degenerate bounty hunter had tricked them and taken a holocron the year before. Madame Jocasta had worked them to near exhaustion to complete an audit of the archive to ensure nothing else had been stolen, not to mention the amount of work that Gar had to do to improve the security systems and update their protocols. He’d always been better with the technical side of archive maintenance.

“It’s right back here, see?” He said, indicating behind a pillar which seemed to just support the shelves above the two. “There’s a triangular bit between the pillar and the wall. I swear it’s a button or a lever or something”

“Alright, back off” Zora said, shooing Gar away “go keep watch or something”

Reaching behind the holocrons, Zora made sure to keep the trailing sleeves of her robes from brushing along the shelf. It seemed to have been some time since the section had been dusted. She’d remarked on multiple previous occasions to Madam Jocasta that dusting droid technology had come a long way in the past several decades, but the elderly Jedi had been dismissive, saying that maintaining the cleanliness of the stacks was an essential meditative practice for Archivists. 

Her fingertips finding the switch, Zora tried pushing it like a button, pulling it outward, and rotating the shape along the wall. It refused to budge in any direction.

“Karabast!” She exclaimed, withdrawing her arm and straightening her tabards. “No luck. Maybe it’s force-powered?”

Closing her eyes, Zora reached out with the Force. Energy seemed to flow from everything around her, coursing like a small breeze from each holocron around her, from Gar, standing at the end of the aisle with his hand on his saber hilt, from the city outside the temple, teeming with life, coming together into a massive gale which ran down Zora’s spine and through her fingertips. She felt the triangle on the wall, pushing and probing at it through the force.

*ahem*

Startled from her concentration, Zora jumped with a rather undignified sound at the interruption. 

“Why is it that whenever the Force tells me something is amiss, it’s always you two?” came a voice from the shadows. 

“Madame Jocasta!” exclaimed Gar, jogging over, “I’m sorry! It wasn’t her idea, I was just curious and…” The elderly Chief Librarian dismissed him with a wave of her hand. 

Zora felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment. Gar was always getting them into trouble with his ideas, like the time he thought it would be hilarious to replace the caff in the dining hall with some questionable substance from the Undercity which turned out to come from the wrong side of a bantha. She’d always looked up to his bravery and saw him as a sort of older brother, even though they were surely unrelated. After all, their records said that he was born on Dantooine in the Outer Rim and she was originally from Serenno. Not that it mattered, neither of them had known their birth families. They’d been taken in by the order before they could even walk. 

“Miss Barro, I would expect better judgement from you, you’ve been a knight for all of a year now and you still follow Gar around like a lost Loth cat.” said Jocasta, shaking her head at her former padawan “And you, Gar. I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you a hundred times again. The archive holds many secrets, all of which will reveal themselves in time through the Force…”

“Trust in the Force and knowledge will come. I’m sorry, Master” Gar intoned, as if he’d heard the saying more times than he cared to remember. 

“Now return to your quarters, I sense that tonight is an important time for us to reflect and strengthen our relationship with the Force. I recommend that you two spend some time meditating on your trust in the Order before morning” she said, gesturing for the two to leave. Gar gave Zora a knowing glance, rolling his eyes before turning towards the door. Zora frequently taunted him that he always seemed to act like Master Skywalker when caught, though without the natural charm. Master Skywalker had apparently been recently sent on a special assignment, top secret though rumor around the temple said that he’d been instructed to investigate the Republic at the highest levels. Many Jedi had come to question why so many of their brothers and sisters in the Force had laid down their lives for the Republic’s war. Some suspected that the Republic had become corrupt. After the very public bombing of the temple and subsequent arrest of Padawan Barriss Offee, the whispers of discontent had only grown. Zora had been saddened at the trial, since Offee had always been an amicable friend and frequent visitor of the Archive. The loss was made all the more severe by the loss of Padawan Ahsoka Tano. Gar had taken her loss especially hard and hadn’t left his room for weeks afterwards. They were not allowed attachments as Jedi, but it was sometimes hard to ignore feelings. At least he hadn’t taken it as hard as Master Skywalker. He’d barely returned from his campaign on Utapau intact. 

“Wait” said Madam Jocasta, stopping suddenly behind her two assistants. Zora felt it too. The Force had suddenly become unsettled. A dark presence hovered along the edges of her perception. Death. Destruction. Betrayal. Something was coming.

“What is it, master?” Asked Gar in a hushed tone.

“Come with me, Gar, draw your weapon. Zora, Stay here” said the Chief Librarian, reaching for her saber. “I sense that something is very, very wrong”

The two strode quickly from the room, leaving Zora alone with the light of her lantern. She’d never truely constructed a lightsaber, which often left her out of some of the more exciting aspects of being a Jedi. She’d never left the temple before, save a few special occasions like when her pod had travelled to Ilum to find their saber crystals. She’d passed the trial with relative ease, finding a seafoam-blue crystal deep within a very dark cave, but when it was time for her to pick pieces for a saber, she struggled. Master Huyang had suggested that she create a tool that would allow her to spread the light of the Force in whatever way would work best for her, which resulted in the lantern which Zora had carried since. It was fairly useless in combat, except if something needed to be bashed over the head, but worked well for finding obscure records within the Archives. It had attracted Madame Jocasta’s attention enough to earn Zora the title of her padawan. However, this was a time where a saber may have proven more helpful. 

Sitting in one of the carrels, Zora browsed through a datapad, not really focusing on the words which flickered across the screen. Her mind was too unfocused, uncharacteristically. It seemed as if a storm cloud like those on Bespin had come to rest directly over the Temple, flooding the hallways with tibanna gas and making the world seem fuzzy. Suddenly the doors to the archive slammed open and a frazzled-looking Jocasta Nu came rushing through.

“Master, what’s happening?” Said Zora, standing quickly and grabbing her lantern.

“We don’t have much time, child. The Temple is under attack. The clones have turned against us” Said the elderly librarian with more life that Zora had ever seen in her. A wave of panic rolled off of her, flashing a vision of white armor, red blaster fire, and a single blue saber in Zora’s mind.

“What? What do we do?” she said, a bead of cold sweat dripping down her spine. 

“I need you to go to the wall where you and Gar just were. Use the force, ask nicely. Stay hidden in that vault and lock the door behind you. I will lead them away. Gar has already gone to find us a ship. May the Force be with us.” Jocasta said hurriedly.   
Zora understood. For any archivist, the main priority during a siege was to protect the most sensitive information. Madame Jocasta was probably going to ensure that other repositories were untouched which left the protection of the main vaults to her. Gar was the only one with enough field experience to pilot them away safely. She swallowed heavily.

“Master don’t go!” she tried to say, but the words were caught in her throat as Jocasta ran from the Archive again. The smell of blaster fire permeated the hallway, followed by flashes of lights and shouting. 

Turning and running as fast as she had since her padawan days, Zora rushed through the aisles of the archive. Reaching the shelf where she and Gar had just been investigating, she pushed outward in the Force with the one thought ‘please’. 

She felt the triangle rotate and sink backwards into the wall, releasing a mechanism which sank the shelf into the floor and revealing a secret vault. Zora slid into the area, fumbling along the dark wall for a switch to close the door.

With a heavy thump, she was cut off from the rest of the temple and the carnage that was to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! Zora's story has already progressed several arcs beyond this over on TikTok, but I really wanted to be able to tell her story with all the tiny details that I think of while making videos. I'm hoping to keep her story canon-compliant, though there may be minor tweaks which I'll point out if needed. Gar is actually a canon character from the Vader comics but there's not much info on his life before order 66 so I had to kinda make up some of the details. This work is currently unbeta'd but I'd love to have someone read over chapters before I publish them just to make sure that things stay continuous. This is my first attempt at OC fanfic, so suggestions and commentary means the world to me. Thanks again, and may the Force be with you!


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